1.
Mid-Delaware Bridge
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The Mid-Delaware Bridge, sometimes known as the Port Jervis-Matamoras Bridge or the Fourth Barrett Bridge, is a continuous truss bridge which carries U. S. Routes 6 and 209 across that river between two communities and thus the states of New York and Pennsylvania. It is the only bridge on the upper main stem of the Delaware. The current bridge, built by R. C, ritz Construction Company in 1939 at a cost of $380,000, is the most recent in a long history of crossings between the two communities. It was supposed to have completed by 1852, but due to the railroads unsuccessful efforts to have the law requiring the bridge declared unconstitutional it only began building it that year. In 1870 that bridge was destroyed in a storm, directors of the Milford and Matamoras confronted Jay Gould about this in New York when the Erie showed no apparent interest in immediately rebuilding it. He told them the railroad had sold its interest in the bridge to another company, the bridge which had two spans of 325 feet opened in 1872. In March 1875 an ice dam on the Delaware upstream broke and in the ensuing flood, the rail bridge then took out sections of the Barrett Bridge which floated 25 miles downstream but were relatively undamaged. They were carted back and reassembled within a few weeks and it lasted until its destruction in the severe flood of October 1903. A new Barrett Bridge was built shortly thereafter, using a similar to the current bridge. In 1922 it was taken over by the new Joint Interstate Bridge Commission set up by the two states to manage their Delaware River bridges, tolls were eliminated, the toll house on the Port Jervis side still stands and has been incorporated into the popular Flo-Jean restaurant. The Barrett Bridge was finally retired in the late 1930s due to increasing auto and truck traffic, and it would be the only crossing in the area until Interstate 84 was completed in the 1960s with a bridge less than a mile downstream. The Mid-Delaware has proven hardier than its predecessors, standing firm through the flooding in 1955. However, it was closed during the 2006 flooding due to the river waters overrunning its approach roads on either side, in June 2007, the Commission approved $550,000 worth of work to be completed in 2008. The abutment backwalls on both sides, and the pier expansion dam, will be repaired, list of crossings of the Delaware River Port Jervis/Matamoras Bridge 6/28/06 Video from Times-Herald Record New Media showing 2006 flood at its height around bridge
2.
Port Jervis, New York
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Port Jervis is a city located at the confluence of the Neversink and the Delaware rivers in western Orange County, New York, north of the Delaware Water Gap. Its population was 8,828 at the 2010 census, the communities of Deerpark, Huguenot, Sparrowbush, and Greenville are adjacent to Port Jervis. Matamoras, Pennsylvania is across the river and connected by bridge, the towns of Montague, New Jersey borders here. It was part of industrial history, a point for shipping coal to major markets to the southeast by canal. Its residents had long-distance passenger service by railroad until 1970, the restructuring of railroads resulted in a decline in the citys business and economy. Port Jervis is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown metropolitan area as well as the larger New York metropolitan area, in August 2008, Port Jervis was named one of Ten Coolest Small Towns by Budget Travel magazine. The first fully developed European settlement in the area was established by Dutch and English colonists c.1690, the settlement was originally known as Mahackamack, after a Lenape word. It was raided and burned in 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, by British, over the next two decades, residents rebuilt the settlement. They developed more roadways to better connect Mahackamack with the parts of Orange County. A village was incorporated in 1853 and it was renamed as Port Jervis in the mid-19th century, after John Bloomfield Jervis, chief engineer of the D&H Canal. Port Jervis grew steadily into the 1900s, and on July 26,1907, it became a city. The first rail line to run through Port Jervis was the New York & Erie Railroad, ground was broken in 1835, but construction was delayed by a nationwide financial panic, and did not start again until 1838. The line was completed in 1851, and the first passenger train – with President Millard Fillmore, the railroad went through a number of name changes, becoming the Erie Railroad in 1897. Like the D&H Canal, the railroads brought new prosperity to Port Jervis in the form of increased trade, however, the competition by the railroad, which could deliver products faster, hastened the decline of the canal, which ceased operation in 1898. The railroads were the basis of the economy for the coming decades. Port Jervis became Eries division center between Jersey City, New Jersey and Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, and by 1922, twenty passenger trains went through the city every day, more than 2,500 Erie RR employees made their homes there. The railroads began to decline after the Great Depression, a shift in transportation accelerated after World War II with the federal subsidy of the Interstate Highway System and increased competition from trucking companies. One of the first Class I railroads to shut down was the O&W, in 1957, a few years later, in 1960, the Erie, also on a shaky financial footing, merged with Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad to become the Erie Lackawanna
3.
Pike County, Pennsylvania
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Pike County is a county located in the U. S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 57,369, Pike County is included in the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2006, Pike County was the county in the state of Pennsylvania. Pike County was named for General Zebulon Pike and it was organized on March 26,1814 from part of Wayne County, Pennsylvania. Some English settlement in the area had started during the colonial years, in 1694, Governor Benjamin Fletcher of the colony of New York sent Captain Arent Schuyler to investigate claims that the French were recruiting Indian allies for use against the English. Nicholas Depui was the first to settle in the area, in 1725, thomas Quick moved to the area that would become Milford in 1733. Andrew Dingman settled on the Delaware River at the site of Dingmans Ferry in 1735. The early settlers got along well with the Lenape and traded with them, as settlement increased and their land practices encroached on Lenape uses, land disputes arose. The colonists infamous Walking Purchase of 1737 swindled the Indians out of more than half of present-day Pike County, as they realized what had happened, violent conflicts arose between the Lenape and the colonists. Early in the century, coal was discovered nearby in the area that would become Carbondale. This became especially significant as the British restricted export of British coal to the United States after the War of 1812, creating a fuel shortage in rapidly expanding New York City. To get the coal to New York, developers proposed a gravity railroad from Carbondale to Honesdale, the state of New York approved the canal proposal in 1823. Work on the 108-mile Delaware and Hudson Canal began in 1825 and was completed in 1828, the canal system which terminated at the Hudson River near present-day Kingston, proved profitable. But, the barges had to cross the Delaware via a ferry across a slackwater dam. John Roebling proposed continuing the canal over the river as part of an aqueduct, built in 1848, his innovative design required only three piers, where five would ordinarily have been required, this allowed ice floes and timber rafts to pass under with less damage to the bridge. Three other suspension aqueducts were built for the canal. Roeblings Delaware Aqueduct is still standing, possibly the oldest suspension bridge in America, for fifty-one years, coal flowed to New York City via the canal. But the development of railroads, which were faster, cheaper, the New York and Erie Railroad supplanted the canal and in 1898 the water route was abandoned
4.
Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
2010 United States Census
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The 2010 United States Census, is the twenty-third and currently most recent United States national census. National Census Day, the day used for the census, was April 1,2010. As part of a drive to increase the accuracy,635,000 temporary enumerators were hired. The population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, as required by the United States Constitution, the U. S. census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 U. S. Census was the previous census completed, participation in the U. S. Census is required by law in Title 13 of the United States Code. On January 25,2010, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves personally inaugurated the 2010 Census enumeration by counting World War II veteran Clifton Jackson, more than 120 million census forms were delivered by the U. S. Post Office beginning March 15,2010, the number of forms mailed out or hand-delivered by the Census Bureau was approximately 134 million on April 1,2010. The 2010 Census national mail participation rate was 74%, from April through July 2010, census takers visited households that did not return a form, an operation called non-response follow-up. In December 2010, the Census Bureau delivered population information to the president for apportionment, personally identifiable information will be available in 2082. The Census Bureau did not use a form for the 2010 Census. In several previous censuses, one in six households received this long form, the 2010 Census used only a short form asking ten basic questions, How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1,2010. Were there any additional people staying here on April 1,2010 that you did not include in Question 1, mark all that apply, Is this house, apartment, or mobile home – What is your telephone number. What is Person 1s age and Person 1s date of birth, is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin. Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else, the form included space to repeat some or all of these questions for up to twelve residents total. In contrast to the 2000 census, an Internet response option was not offered, detailed socioeconomic information collected during past censuses will continue to be collected through the American Community Survey. The survey provides data about communities in the United States on a 1-year or 3-year cycle, depending on the size of the community, rather than once every 10 years. A small percentage of the population on a basis will receive the survey each year. In June 2009, the U. S. Census Bureau announced that it would count same-sex married couples, however, the final form did not contain a separate same-sex married couple option
7.
Eastern Time Zone
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Places that use Eastern Standard Time when observing standard time are 5 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time. Eastern Daylight Time, when observing daylight saving time DST is 4 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time, in the northern parts of the time zone, on the second Sunday in March, at 2,00 a. m. EST, clocks are advanced to 3,00 a. m. EDT leaving a one-hour gap, on the first Sunday in November, at 2,00 a. m. EDT, clocks are moved back to 1,00 a. m, southern parts of the zone do not observe daylight saving time. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 ruled that daylight saving time would run from the last Sunday of April until the last Sunday in October in the United States, the act was amended to make the first Sunday in April the beginning of daylight saving time as of 1987. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended daylight saving time in the United States beginning in 2007. So local times change at 2,00 a. m. EST to 3,00 a. m. EDT on the second Sunday in March, in Canada, the time changes as it does in the United States. However, a handful of communities unofficially observe Eastern Time because they are part of the Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area – Phenix City, Smiths Station, Lanett, and Valley. Florida, All of Florida is in the Eastern Time zone except for the portion of the Florida Panhandle west of the Apalachicola River, as the Eastern–Central zone boundary approaches the Gulf of Mexico, it follows the Bay/Gulf county line. Indiana, All of Indiana observes Eastern Time except for six counties in the Chicago metropolitan area. Kentucky, Roughly, the half of the state, including all of metropolitan Louisville, is in the Eastern Time Zone. Historically the entire state observed Central Time, when daylight saving time was first introduced, the Lower Peninsula remained on DST after it formally ended, effectively re-aligning itself into the Eastern Time Zone. The Upper Peninsula continued to observe Central Time until 1972, when all, Tennessee, Most of the eastern third of Tennessee is legally on Eastern Time. Eastern Time is also used somewhat as a de facto official time for all of the United States, since it includes the capital and the largest city. Major professional sports leagues also post all game times in Eastern time, for example, a game time between two teams from Pacific Time Zone will still be posted in Eastern time. Most cable television and national broadcast networks advertise airing times in Eastern time, national broadcast networks generally have two primary feeds, an eastern feed for Eastern and Central time zones, and a tape-delayed western feed for the Pacific Time Zone. The prime time is set on Eastern and Pacific at 8,00 p. m. with the Central time zone stations receiving the eastern feed at 7,00 p. m. local time. Mountain Time Zone stations receive a separate feed at 7,00 p. m. local time, as Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, during the summer months, it has its own feed at 7,00 p. m. local time
8.
UTC-5
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UTC−05,00 is a time offset that subtracts five hours from Coordinated Universal Time. In North America, it is observed in the Eastern Time Zone during standard time, the western Caribbean uses it year round. The southwestern and northwestern portions of Indiana Mexico – Central Zone Central, in most of Mexico, daylight time starts a few weeks after the United States. Communities on the U. S. border that observe Central Time follow the U. S. daylight time schedule
Media related to Matamoras, Pennsylvania at Wikimedia Commons
